Origins of Object Knowledge

十个实验调查早期发展，在人类婴儿，知觉的统一部分闭塞的表面。这些实验主要关注婴儿通过测试从信息处理观点得出的预测来感知物体的过程。这种观点强调了适当的视觉技能对物体分离感知的先验必要性，以及在全视野和遮挡条件下观察物体的时间经验。这种经验沉淀了对一般对象更彻底的理解（敏感性优先假设）。实验遵循类似的策略：探索个体在基本视觉处理和物体感知任务中的表现差异。由于运动、深度和边缘方向在物体感知中的中心地位，实验集中于这三种线索的作用。性能评估采用两种方法：(a)眼动追踪，以衡量重要视觉信息拾取的改进；(b)习惯化，以确定对物体统一的感知，并确定对可用视觉信息的敏感程度。实验的短期目标是在经典的自然-培养辩论的背景下阐明基本的发展机制。长期目标是阐明更大的问题，即人类如何获得和构建知识，感知技能如何影响知识获取和结构，以及如何最好地描述早期发展。在未来，这样的理解可能有助于制定诊断和治疗一些发育障碍。

Ten experiments investigate the early development, in human infants, of perception of the unity of partly occluded surfaces. These experiments focus primarily on processes by which infants come to perceive objects by testing predictions drawn from an information-processing viewpoint. This perspective stresses the prior necessity of appropriate visual skills to perception of object segregation, and a time of experience viewing objects in full view and under conditions of occlusion. This experience precipitates a more thorough understanding of objects in general (the sensitivity-first hypothesis). The experiments follow a similar strategy: explorations of individual differences performance in both basic visual processing and object perception tasks. Because of the central place of motion, depth, and edge orientation in object perception, the experiments concentrate on the roles of these three cues. Performance is assessed with two methods: (a) eye tracking, to measure improvements in pickup of important visual information, and (b) habituation, both to ascertain perception of object unity and to determine the extent of sensitivity to available visual information. The short-term objectives of the experiments are to elucidate fundamental developmental mechanisms in the context of the classic nature-nurture debate. The long term goals are to shed light on the larger question of how knowledge is acquired and structured in the human, how perceptual skills impact knowledge acquisition and structure, and how to best characterize early development. In the future, such understanding may aid in the formulation of diagnostics and treatments for some developmental disorders.